


Venice

by rohanrider3



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clintasha - Freeform, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Venice, Widow and Hawkeye Mission, mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-02 19:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12732516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohanrider3/pseuds/rohanrider3
Summary: Why Clint owes Tasha three favors.





	Venice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shieldbearer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldbearer/gifts).



> Just a little one shot (and it actually IS a one shot, appreciate this rareness) I worked on when I've had the time. Love you guys! <3

Tasha snorted and turned back to the controls, punching in their coordinates for the Tower. It’d be a couple of hours. The AvenJet was good, but intercontinental flights took a little time, even for their advanced tech.

Clint opened his mouth to say something more, then winced a little, looked down at his side. Blinked a few times, sluggishly.

Oh.

Huh.

He’d been wounded.

Adreneline high must be wearing off.

Clint studied the wound in his side, almost dispassionately interested. It was just one of those little bolts the Shadowman had been slinging at them. Must have been a last-minute shot right before he went down and been dragged off into custody.

The guy might be a literal card-carrying villain, but damn, what a shot. At that distance? In that lighting? Not bad, Shadowface.

Besides. It was nothing. Some stupid little metal disc thing. No bigger than his knuckle. He’d be fine. Muscle through it. He always had in the past.  
But then a thought came to him, faint and distant and fleeting, that this time, things were different. Something Steve had said about this guy, how he’d been experimenting with weird tech, and organics, and something about…

Tasha.

It could hurt Tasha, too.

Clint was rapidly finding it harder and harder to think, but still, somewhere, he distantly knew that this option was unacceptable.

Steve had said, what, exactly. Steve had said not telling people when you were hurt was wrong. Bad. Clint’s thoughts shied away from that word, the confusing images and old painful memories that threatened to break through with it.

No, not, bad.

Not, like, Clint was a bad person for not telling people when he’d been hurt. Steve had been really worried and gone all grandpa-mode when he figured out that’s what Clint thought he’d meant the first time, all, “Nonononono that’s not what I meant, you’re not bad, Clint, why would you think that,” heh, like Steve knew anything about what Clint was really like, Clint was weak and stupid and a worthless fake, just like Dad and Alan had always sai—  
no, stop, think, something’s wrong, somethings wrong what is it what is it what is it you moron figure it out, Tasha’s gonna get hurt if you don’t—

A sudden jolt of pain shook him out of his reverie. He looked down. Slowly took his hand away from his side. It was red. But that wasn’t what worried him. Blood on his fingers, fine, yeah. Seen it. Old news.

But the black tendrils were new.

Twisting, writhing little branches of darkness pulsed and stuck to the edges of the wound, stretched out to his palm like spiderwebs of shadow, clung to his hand. He blinked again. This wasn’t so bad. He could just muscle through it, get back to the base, he’d done it countless times before and he could do it again. Give the mission report, debrief, then trail off to hide somewhere, figure this out with WebMd on his phone and a first aid kit, and finish getting through it without being more of a bother to anyone else.

Then a sudden thought struck him like a blow across the face.

That's what the Shadowman wanted.

It was exactly what the Shadowman had wanted.

Because whatever—this—was, the Shadowman had wanted it to find and hurt the rest of the team. And he’d found the perfect way to make sure they were exposed to it. Steve had said something about the virus or symbiote or whatever growing if it wasn’t eradicated quickly. And the longer it had someone to feed off of the worse it would—ow, ow, ow, startin to hurt now—

—he could take it, walk it off, he’d be—

—team, team, it’s tryin to get the _team_ , stupid, you’re in the Avenjet, you’re its ticket in, remember that—

Because hurting his team wasn’t something Clint Barton could allow. If he’d had his way, he’d have fought alone against the darkness, against the thing infecting him and only him, and above all, fight it alone, fight it tooth and nail, until either he died or it did. But the Shadowman didn’t work that way.

And now he was on the AvenJet. Taking the damn thing straight to his team, like the stupid idiot he was. And it wasn’t something he could fight.

The only thing he could do was ask for help.

Which he did not like to do. Wasn’t even really sure how, to be honest. He’d asked others, a long time ago.

And those times had never ended well.

But he had to try, again, now.

He had to try again.

Now was different. Now was Tasha. She’d help.

He tried to speak, explain it to Tasha. But his voice wouldn’t work. Was gone, stolen away. He tried again, had to warn her, had to warn her, had to warn her now before they got back to the Tower, before i—

The world was grey and titling. And suddenly, excruciatingly painful.

As it turned out, it was almost a good thing that Clint had lost his voice.

                                                                                         *                   *                *

  
Clint made a sound behind her. Tasha pressed her lips together in annoyance, expecting—yet another—would be witty attempt at banter that she was currently in no mood to humor. She stood it most of the time, but he’d been particularly maddening for the last week and a half during their stakeout in Norcia, and it was driving her absolutely insane.

“Stop trying to be a comedian.” she said, a little more curtly than was strictly necessary. “We’re supposed to be professionals, and you’re being annoying as hell right now.”

Another sound.

One she’d never heard before.

She stopped triple-checking the readouts and and whipped her head around, a much different expression on her face, and stared straight at Clint. Had he just said—

“—tasha.” he said, face ashen and voice cracking, “—elp, me…”

He’d reached out a hand towards her, and his partner didn’t know for the longest time afterwards what had been scarier. The genuine look of panicked fear igniting behind his eyes, or the black streaks of some stupid malevolent magic growing stronger and streaking down one arm from where it pulsed through his fingers.

Lines running, _growing,_ stretching towards his heart.

God in heaven. His _heart_.

He’d never been scared. Not that he showed, anyway.

He’d never asked for help.

Even when he’d been bleeding out that first time in Sudan, the first time she’d almost, truly lost him—she’d caught him clumsily trying to suture the wound together back behind their base with _dental floss_ and an old embroidery needle. He’d sheepishly pleaded extreme blood loss as his one (flimsy) excuse for absol- _futzing_ -lutely failing basic first aid.

The idiot.

But that’s not what she said now.

“CLINT!” she cried out, in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

“—biote.” he said, slurring his words. “…hurts…”

He blinked, shook his head. One knee buckled and he wobbled, tried to remain upright, grabbed clumsily at one of the chairs, clutched at it in a white-knuckled grip as he crashed ungracefully to one knee. He looked up at her, face pale, grey eyes wide. He looked almost as surprised as she felt.

Then, without remembering how she got there, Tasha had leapt out of the pilot’s chair and was kneeling at his side. The jet wasn’t crashing, so she must have engaged the autopilot. Which was good.

But Clint had fallen the rest of the way to the floor and started seizing. Badly.

Which was definitely not good.

Tasha bit her lip, reaching out for him, forcing herself to remember what to do if your significant oth—if your partner—started having a seizure after a all-things-considered—not-very-hard--mission.

They’d been after a second-level mook, for crying out loud. Not a major player, like Loki, or a worlds-eating monstrosity.

But now this.

She turned Clint over on his side, held him steady with one hand. Yanked some tissues down from the cute little packet Pepper always kept on the dashboard, pressed them down on the cut yawning out over his ear. Crimson streaked the corner of the chair’s seat by her head.

He’d cut his head open on the edge when he’d fallen.

Head wounds bled a lot.

They always did.

That was normal.

Hawkeye collapsing for no apparent reason wasn’t.

And he never asked for help.

Rapidly considering different courses of action as she steadied her shaking partner, Tasha reached out with her foot and kicked his dropped quiver and bow away from them, so he couldn’t accidentally hurt himself. They rolled away from her, different arrows—he always had so many kinds of arrows, what on earth could a boomerang arrow even do—rolling and clinking away from them under the chairs, spreading out in a fanlike pattern across the floor of the AvenJet.

The floor was sort of dirty. From her position on the floor, holding Clint, trying to keep his airway clear, Tasha caught sight of various bits of deitritus. There was tracked mud from their Amazonian mission last week. Bits of Asgardian plant life from a few days before. Some wrappers from that West Coast hamburger place Clint never shut up about scrunched up and stuck under one of the chairs. His chair, probably.

But the floor was dirty.

She didn’t want Clint seizing on a dirty floor.

She hadn’t even known he’d been hurt.

She hadn’t seen—

Don’t get distracted, Tasha.

Think, Tasha.

Think.

She hadn’t known he was—

—and now he was—

THINK!!

Tasha forced herself to concentrate, different plans flicking their way through her mind.

—he’s trying to speak, what is it, Clint, what is it—

“—ymbiote—“

—what the hell is a imbytote—oh, right, symbiote, oh, SHIT—

“—don’ letit—spread—“

—stop talking Clint stop talking Clint you’ll only make things worse—

“—re, fire, Cap said it hates—f-f-fire…”

—and then Clint’s voice cut off for good, his neck stiffened, and Tasha could only watch helplessly as his back arched once, twice, three times again.

Tasha thought their day couldn’t get worse.

But that was before the autopilot gave out just over Venice.

And before the symbiote had grown three heads.    

                                                                                 *                    *                    *

Clint owed her three favors by the end of THAT stressful day.

They kept tabs on that kind of thing.

First favor—the improbable, incredible landing she’d pulled off in St. Mark’s Square. During Carnival, no less.

Second—using a lighter and blisteringly strong language to trick the symbiote out of Clint and into the nearest Carnival bonfire.

Third, for keeping Clint from dying, both from blood loss (the Shadowman’s aim had been distressingly good) and burns (the symbiote hadn’t left quietly—or nicely).

For the longest time, Venice was on top of Hawkeye and Widow’s list of “Places We’d Rather Not Go To Again, Thanks Though, Fury.”

That, and the fact that bonfires were, in fact, frowned upon by city authorities during Carnival. Something about the smoke damaging ancient facades.

Tasha didn’t care.

She was just glad her partner had made it out of Venice in one piece.

More or less.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey shieldbearer, now you and everyone else knows what happened in Venice :) 
> 
> *hugs to everyone*


End file.
